VMA preview: Best New Artist? Justin Bieber. Duh.

Last year’s MTV Video Music Awards ceremony will be hard to beat – for its incredible planned moments (Janet Jackson’s tribute to her brother Michael, Madonna’s heartfelt speech) and unplanned ones (um, did Kanye West do something?). Nevertheless, they will try to top it Sunday night.

To prepare, we’ll look at some of the top categories this week.

We’ll start with the most obvious one: Best New Artist.

The nominees are a pretty good cross-section of newcomers – the atmospheric Broken Bells, party girl Ke$ha, the fantastic Nicki Minaj and Kara DioGuardi protégé Jason DeRulo. But these awards are voted on by fans at the VMA mini-site and Justin Bieber’s “Baby” is also a nominee so, well, you do the math. I’d love to see Minaj win (imagine the mall riots! the Twitter meltdown!) But unless some hackers get involved, the Bieb has this one locked up.

Check back all week for our VMA previews and camp out Sunday night when we live blog and Tweet the awards. Follow us @ndmusic.